


what i wish i'd known

by Verbyna



Series: call me son (one more time) [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Age Difference, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Father-Son Relationship, M/M, get behind me satan, no daddy kink in this one just a lot of regret, so you can have my back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:30:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: Alicia moves in with her new boyfriend on a Saturday, and on Monday, Bob and his hangover board a plane to Vegas.





	what i wish i'd known

**Author's Note:**

> i jumped into this sandbox bc my pal SummerFrost made a compelling argument and now i can't get out. on the plus side, she beta'd it.

Alicia moves in with her new boyfriend on a Saturday, and on Monday, after at least four too many hours of drinking and telling Kent what to do on Skype, Bob and his hangover board a plane to Vegas.

He caves when Kent offers to book him a hotel and immediately regrets it when the Uber drops him off in front of maybe the flashiest one on the Strip. Bob’s not familiar with Vegas beyond bachelor parties, the team came here after his time, but his throat closes when he sees the sheer mass of humanity with smartphones out front.

He pulls down the brim of his nondescript hat and wraps his hangover tighter around him like it’ll make him invisible. He makes it through check-in, somehow, and manages not to vomit in the elevator up to the suite.

Because of course Kenny booked him into the suite. Bob reflects, as he peels his sticky layers off, that Kent Parson probably doesn’t know how to ask for any other kind of room in Vegas. Or he just asked for a room and the staff gave him the suite, par for the course for the Golden Boy. After all, Bob’s the one who taught him how to tip.

When Bob gets out of the shower there’s a text from Kent waiting. It’s a photo of his bared neck: _j’arrive._ It makes Bob put his head in his hands and wish the same old threadbare wishes - for better judgment, for forgiveness, for sex to forget and for his son to never, ever become him - and then it makes him lie down on the luxurious bed and stare at the ceiling so he won’t touch himself.

He likes to pretend he can resist this. He learned how to pretend late, and he learned from his own family, but he’s getting better at it.

Kenny arrives an hour later. How he managed to get a day off this close to the pre-season, Bob can’t even begin to fathom, but Kent’s tanned and off-season muscled and he stops in the doorway like _Bob’s_ the best view in the room. He must see the ghost image of Bob from years ago the same way Bob is always looking at nineteen-year-old Kent; these days Bob’s undereye bags have their own bags and he lost weight. He hasn’t been this thin since he was a teenager, younger than Kent was when he fell for Bob’s son.

Bob’s never been the sort to cover himself, though, so he keeps lying there like the ghost of Christmases to come and lets Kent decide what he wants to do with him. Alicia knew how to bring him to his knees with a look, but Kent’s too selfish to make promises like hers. Even if he could, there is no way to make Bob feel like this is worth it.

“Kenny,” he says. He stops. He lets his eyes trail up to meet Kent’s and says, “Come here.”

“Make me,” Kent says, still in the doorway, taking taking taking. His time, Bob’s time, whatever he wants. “You need this. Say you need it and you can do whatever you want.”

“Kenny,” Bob says in his you-need-surgery-champ voice, “you need this. You called me here, remember? Come here.”

Kent stops in the middle of toeing his shoes off to roll his eyes at Bob. He says, “Sorry I didn’t let you relapse,” but he also knee-walks across the bed and straddles Bob, so Bob forgives him.

“You want this,” he tells Bob, and leans in for a kiss.

Bob tilts Kent’s head up by his hair and drags his teeth across his neck. “You want this too,” he says, because Kenny sent him that photo for a reason. He holds himself very still so he’ll feel the way Kent shivers against him, wider and stronger than him, and still changing.

When did Bob stop changing? He wants to fuck Kent, wants it to be the only thing he thinks about while Alicia settles into her new home, but he feels ancient everywhere their skin rubs together. Old in his ribs, his lips, his thighs, cheap like a consolation prize where Kent’s rutting against his cock. Was he this person when he told Jack to run after the boy he loves? When Alicia fucked him one last time, divorce papers on the dining room table? When he got the call about Jack’s overdose, or when he tried to be proud that Jack got into a good college?

Kent starts to move down his body, and suddenly Bob wants him between his thighs, shoulders holding him open until Bob can stop thinking. He puts his hand back on Kent’s head and pushes him lower, lower, until Kent snags his fingers in Bob’s pubic hair and shakes his head loose from the hold.

When Kent’s lips first wrap around Bob’s dick, there’s a moment where it feels like Bob’s life is crashing down around him. It was like that the first time and it’s like that every time, but now that Bob’s life is actually up in flames, it just feels right. It makes his dick twitch - he’s _here,_ in this hotel room, a washed-up legend getting his dick sucked by someone who’ll get just as many trophies, someone whose name will be next to his in the hall of fame. He has Jack to carry his name and Kent to carry the seamy side of his legacy: the NDAs and the eventual wife, the hungover games, the twist in the gut when he locks eyes with the queer kid across the ice and flips a mental coin for whether the kid will drop the game or do this, again, safe behind some records.

Kenny slurps his way back up just as Bob’s phone starts vibrating on the other pillow. Startled, he tries to push Kent away, but Kent locks his arms behind Bob’s thighs. Bob groans and looks at the screen. He’s expecting lawyers, but it’s Jack.

“Answer it,” Kent suggests. He goes back down and makes it a demand, teeth around Bob’s dick.

Bob answers, hating himself. “Bonjour Jack, ça va?”

“Bonjour, papa. Can you talk?”

“Well--”

“T'es où?”

“Fishing,” Bob says, even though he hates fishing and only bought the cabin for Jack. He desperately hopes that Jack is not on the way to the cabin right now.

He also desperately hopes that Kent won’t realize he has Bob at his mercy now. His teeth are still around Bob’s dick. Bob’s dick, to his vague horror, isn’t going limp, because he trained his body to do better when threatened.

When he says, “I can talk,” Kenny’s teeth _glint._

“I think the guys are figuring out who Bitty is. I mean who he really is.”

“Shh,” Bob says to Kent and Jack both. “It’s okay. What did they--”

“They just _know,_ Papa, I don’t know how but it’s like they smell the gay on me, and--”

“They can’t,” Bob says. “They can’t smell the queer on you, believe me, just--”

“I’m scared,” Jack says. Bob stifles a moan and tries to tell his heart to stop pounding against things that can’t touch him anymore. He’s the afterthought in this, he never had the options, he doesn’t know how to talk about it without opening a can of worms years - _decades_ \- out of date.

He says, “You have nothing to be ashamed of," and stifles Kent’s laughter by pushing him down on his dick. He wants to laugh too, but Jack would take it the wrong way.

Kent asks him, much later, if he’s ashamed. Bob says he’s not.

“But should Jack be ashamed?”

“Of course not,” Bob says. It’s amazing, really, how he doesn’t need to lie. The lie stretched so far, swallowed so much, but can’t reach his son. It reaches Kent; of course it does. But not Bob’s son.

“Are you ashamed of me?” Kent asks. His eyes are big and green and flat like a mirror. Bob makes himself meet his own eyes in them.

He says, _no._ He’s learning to pretend he’s not ashamed of himself, doesn’t hate himself. He can’t be a hypocrite and hate Kent for it.

Kent lays his head on Bob’s shoulder, on the side where his heart isn’t.

“Should Jack be ashamed of me?”

Bob doesn’t say anything.

This is the thing he learned when he was twenty-five, thirty-nine, forty-eight. Not the secret, but the lesson: someone is always dirtier than someone else. Some people learn to take more filth than others. Some people are more ambitious, or scared, or lonely. And they wear shame like a second skin under their skin, payment for everything they take for themselves.

Kent would get it, but Jack wouldn’t. And Bob prayed for this long after his faith was spent. Bob would rather break his own heart, break Kent’s, than Jack’s.

They’re not the same.

**Author's Note:**

> @soundslikepenance on tumblr, except i'm not sorry


End file.
